The biggest shift in social media marketing over the past five years has been a move away from interaction and towards straight entertainment. While interaction and engagement were once key focuses for brands on social media, the platforms have shifted towards prioritizing time spent in each app. This change has been largely influenced by the rise of TikTok, which has changed the way all platforms operate. TikTok focused on time spent and public posting, rather than likes and comments, which has led to a re-alignment of social media around entertainment instead of the social aspects that were previously the focus. As a result, social media marketing strategies need to be re-aligned to focus on entertainment rather than engagement.
Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have increasingly incorporated AI recommendations into their algorithms, with 50% of content on Instagram and 30% on Facebook now coming from AI recommendations. The key metric for these platforms is how long users spend watching content, rather than likes and comments. While time spent on these platforms has increased as a result of AI recommendations, engagement in the form of comments and posts from users has declined, particularly among younger audiences. Social media is becoming less social and more like traditional media with interactive elements, making it important for marketers to shift their focus towards producing entertaining content rather than content that spurs engagement.
With the rise of generative AI tools, the focus on entertainment in social media is likely to become even more pronounced. While AI tools can create human-like images, text, and video clips, they struggle to come up with truly creative concepts. Most concepts generated by AI tools are generic and repetitive, which may not resonate in the entertainment-focused social media landscape. The challenge for AI generators is that they can only iterate on what has come before, leading to stale and clichéd ideas. As a result, truly unique and interesting concepts will become even more valuable among a sea of regurgitated ideas generated by AI systems.
As platforms increasingly shift towards AI recommendations, traditional best practices in social media marketing such as engagement bait, hashtags, and calls to action will become less important. The key driver for reach in social media apps will be entertainment and increasing time spent with content. Fresh, interesting, and unique concepts will become more valuable in a landscape inundated with content generated by AI systems. It is unlikely that AI tools will be the source of the next great concept due to their inherent limitations in producing truly original ideas. Overall, as platforms move away from their social roots and towards user behaviors, marketers will need to adapt their strategies to focus more on entertainment and less on traditional engagement tactics.
In conclusion, the shift in social media marketing towards entertainment over engagement has been driven by platforms like TikTok and the incorporation of AI recommendations. Marketers will need to re-align their strategies to focus more on producing entertaining content that captures users’ attention and keeps them engaged. As AI tools continue to be used more in content creation, the value of unique and interesting concepts will increase in a landscape filled with repetitive and clichéd ideas generated by AI systems. The key to success in social media marketing will be creating fresh and engaging content that resonates with users in an entertainment-focused environment, rather than relying on traditional engagement tactics.